EDITORIAL

Presentation of Issue 11 N° 2 July-December, 2013.

In the trajectory of the Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Niñez y Juventud, we have propitiated some glimpses at the children and the young people as contemporary subjects, from plural, diverse categories that go beyond the monolithic and universal view typical of modernity. This has implied recognizing the new socialization contexts of the children and young people, and the unprecedented forms of their subjectivizing processes that interact with the hegemonic presence of the mass media (both the “old” and the new ones) that manage them and present to them ways of knowing, of being in the world. This has derived into the reconfiguration of their relations with the power and authority of the adult world, which has presupposed a blurring of the traditional roles and patterns of the families. Even though this issue deals with topics related with ontological and educational theories, and in relation to them children and teachers are referred to, what is related with young people plays a paramount role in different perspectives.

The reflection about the difficulties and after effects of the present-day processes of educational and labor transition of the youth, which tries to appraise the pertinence of the policies and programs, today plays a key role in the construction of those glances we refer to. In Latin America and The Caribbean, after the social debacle inherited by the neoliberal reforms, and since the arrival of progressive governments more identified with public intervention so as to achieve social development, new educational and labor policies were promoted. However, the burden of the structural economic and social inequality has had a negative effect on the inequitable distribution of the opportunities of social participation among the young when it comes to projecting their educational itineraries and designing their labor and professional trajectories. The approach centered on the category “citizen participation of the young people” is complementary to the above in everyday life in the framework of the political practices of young people in urban and rural contexts. Three axes become present there: The first refers to the various territories for daily participation, the second covers the young’s local conscience, and the third one has to do with their capacity for transforming action.

A very illustrative example of the above may be the young high school students from Chile and France, who mobilized to defend and improve the quality of education during 2006 and 2008. When analyzing both mobilizations and the factors that influence the construction of political identity, political orientations, the role of high school as a political socializer, as well as the importance of political socializations, the results demonstrate that the Chilean students, unlike the French ones, have difficulties identifying themselves with the political parties, even if they show clear-cut political values. Likewise, primary socialization imposes itself on the students and the role of high school is fundamental to mobilize them and to strengthen political ties.

Another point of view emerges when we analyze migratory experiences and transitions in the educational system and in the labor market among young immigrants. For young people, the school became the main learning institution and the place where they establish relationships of friendship and group coexistence in the host country, but it is also a space of tensions, conflicts, violence and discrimination. In a context of crisis, the young immigrants face problems to carry out their labor transitions, caused by legal restrictions to immigration, due to racial prejudices, due to the worsening of working relationships and due to the elevated unemployment rates.

Analyzing scenarios that place the young indigenous population in border situations is another category of interest in the studies on childhood and youth. On the one hand, the condition of living on the geographic and administrative limits that separate national States; on the other, formal schooling, understanding it as a transitional or frontier space. This analytical category has become a theoretical tool fraught with tensions in social sciences, and it invites us to ponder the young’s voices and stands. In that same direction, we can appreciate how in regions that receive day-laborer families, families that arrive in search of temporary jobs, a phenomenon of round-trip migration occurs, in which children and teenagers are involved in a significant way, either working in adult occupations such as the domestic help and care-givers. Their participation as immigrants and workers has not been visualized; their contribution is only recognized as help; their role is that of companions, without recognition of their rights, and without access to social benefits. Therefore, the necessity arises to analyze the work they do and to put forward their social visibility.

The study that explores the perceptions of the use of condoms in relation to the STD/ HIV among young immigrants and non-immigrants is innovative; it makes it possible for us to get close to the social construction of sexuality, the perception of risk and vulnerability in relation to the use of condoms and the STD. Findings indicate that the perception of risk is expressed by means of the concept “who is who”, which reflects social processes of trust and control, generating typologies of couples that may contribute to risk and vulnerability among the young facing unplanned pregnancies and HIV/STD. In connection to this phenomenon, it is revealing to know a model of intervention from the study on the sexual exploitation of children, and teenagers in the city of Cartagena in Colombia, to the end of strengthening the access to justice of children and adolescent victims of sexual exploitation from the perspective of the empowering of society, the defense of human rights and gender equality. The risk factors that have an effect on the proliferation of such situations are shown and the model of legal empowerment and legal representation of these groups, victims of the sexual exploitation is systemized as the main axes of intervention against this situation.

On the other hand, it is possible to appreciate how the young were neglected by specific public policies in Latin America, mainly in what respects their needs for sport and leisure. Identifying their demands in this sense becomes thus a great social demand. Recent research suggests how they need more time for their practices, a larger infrastructure and more accessible facilities. Developing projects in the field of sports and leisure for the young is something that the public sector has been doing, even when they do not cater to the needs of all the young, just for a small sector in a state of social vulnerability. The existing debates about teenagers’ leisure adds to the one related with those who are inmates in educational-correctional facilities. Three areas have been identified for analysis: Design of leisure, leisure activities and educational processes. To this end, the leisure activities before imprisonment, during internment and during the execution of the disciplinary action are taken as focus. The social practice of leisure as objective possibility of the young’s (re) insertion to everyday life is of vital importance, since it supports the educational processes that contribute to social inclusion.

In the glimpses at childhood, we have uncovered that the prostitution of young and teen girls is one of the most visible ways of sexual, commercial exploitation. It is a crime and a violation of their human rights, it damages their physical and emotional health, and in addition, it leads to social stigmatization and discrimination. The critical analysis of the discourse that young and adult merchants reproduce on this theme, allows for the identification of the social and cultural assumptions that validate the inequitable use of power to the disadvantage of the young and teenaged girls forced into prostitution, while exploiters are justified and exonerated. The elements for prevention can be extracted from these discourses. And the fact is that childhood is a relational, diverse and unequal phenomenon that is constructed historically and socially. Other studies on this population field present findings on how medicine, psychology and pedagogy contribute to the representations of a given model of “normal” childhood that is articulated with the construction of diagnoses on the Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). That’s why reflecting on the teaching adults’ and educational psychologists’ discourses, the knowledge they have and the children/students’ autonomy in the school space is necessary so as to be able to interact with them in a renewed manner.

Another look into the human being, in this case, and as Dussel and Lévinas would say that of victim subject, is dealt with in the present issue from the autobiographical stories of men and women residents of Medellín, Colombia, who had been expelled violently from the rural areas in previous times. Contrarily to the prevailing look, exile can be looked upon as a narrative event, as a unique story, where the loss of the world did not begin or end with the expulsion. Among other circumstances, it is possible to observe a reduced democracy, the precariousness of the rule of law, the deepening of injustices and other forms of violence. In addition, it reveals the exile as a moving being with different ways of appearing in the world; free and capable of beginning something new as an ethical and political subject. In this view, a case study about a fourteen-year-old boy, who committed a sex crime against his brother, is also included here. In an exemplarity perspective, which is characterized by the intensity of the knowledge produced and the recognition of complexity, the ambiguities present in the debate are stressed. The relationship between the teenager and his mother is underscored, as well as the family relations and the support system that surrounds the teenager. We found aspects that coincide with the international literature and the particularities of the Brazilian reality, mainly in terms of its social and economic conditions.

If we talk about children’s educators, we get a lot of input from the evaluation of the form of representation and the level of tolerance of young learner teachers’ affections, on the basis of stories of painful events remembered. Results derived from a program with them show that there are positive changes in the awareness of affection. The question about how long said changes will remains open. Along the same lines, we come across findings about the subjective or personal theories present in Latin American books with advice for parents, based on their sons’ and daughters’ emotional education. In them, stimulation of affective or emotional development, moral education and the roles of fathers and mothers are relevant when put forward with a little bit of alarmism and psychological determinism in respect of childhood about the psychological conflicts of adulthood.

Turning our look to the teachers in general, it is convenient to present the ways in which evaluation is configured as an instrument for constituting subjects, due to the fact that it becomes present in society through an ample network of devices and that it determines tenuous differentiations between abnormality and normality, accepted and refused, good and bad, inclusion and exclusion, apt and inept, what is useful or useless, what should be accepted and what should be refused, in multiple, subtle ways. The evaluation, as it is installed in the educational systems, works through a plurality of practices as a device for constituting subjects. Following the line of thought on the formative processes in the educational sector, we have found that the category “technological mediations” has the virtue of allowing us to describe in a precise way the manner in which contemporary culture in general, and the educational sector in particular, are being transformed permanently and profoundly by the teachers’ and the students’ intervention by means of digital media. Specifically, the formation processes are being transformed in architecture, and consequently, the way in which students and teachers understand and apply the profession is being affected. As a result, the didactic processes are destined to articulate teaching through digital expression means with the designing processes.

In this issue, the theme of professional formation is followed up; this topic has traditionally had a negative conception (students without the capacity to study). However, at present there are very positive results for labor insertion, due to their practical training (entrepreneurial ambit). The existing research on the subject matter is few and far between and it is necessary to know about the inner workings of centers that incorporate Professional Formation Formative Cycles (High School Institutes), from an organizational perspective. As to higher education, there is evidence of a rapprochement in the sense that a group of young university students feel passion for learning, understood as an intelligent act, out of vocation and love for a career, out of pleasure, so as to savor knowledge, as a challenge that requires rigor and permanent effort.

If we talk about mothers of young children, factors such as where they live (in urban or rural areas), their school levels and age are related to their socialization goals. The results suggest than the mothers from urban areas, who are underage and have a higher school level, tend to value more socialization goals related with promoting independence, whereas the older mothers with a lower school level value more the socialization goals linked with interdependence. Likewise, the communal mothers’ support networks are approached. Each one constructs their own care network, whose sense axis is the care provided to the children. Conclusions: (1) the care of these children requires a care network; (2) this is a subjective construction; (3) when a woman becomes a communal mother, her work becomes an ethics of shared destiny and (4), in the care networks, the communal mothers take care of children and they are taken care of.

The educational theories referring to the museums have a special chapter in the present issue due to their important contribution. It is possible to appreciate various deconstructive, transforming practices typical of the so-called educational sector that characterizes contemporary museums. We found research that tends to unveil perceptions and beliefs on their educational and cultural nature. As a conclusion, it may be said that the staff that work in these spaces coincide on the centrality of the museum’s educating function; nevertheless, they have managed to uncover how, why or who should be responsible for its leadership.

It is admirable how ample and comprehensive the field of social sciences research is in Latin America, it interconnects all that is done and thought about the children and the young people with various scenarios and educational, formative practices, as well as on the adult agents that are involved in these practices. The magazine will continue to be open to whoever wants to contribute to us their knowledge produced in this sense.

The Third Section of the magazine on Reports and Analysis contains the updated indexes organized by theme and author and the OEI Bulletin 87 on the Decade for an Education for Sustainability. It also mentions the call for the 7th International Conference “Presence of Paulo Freire”, an opportunity to reflect and to grow up, that will be held from May 2nd to 6th, 2014 in Cienfuegos, Cuba. The Uniss’s Second International Scientific Conference, “Yayabociencia”, will be held in Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, from November 27th to 29th, 2013. And finally, the 4th Latin American Conference on Social Sciences Methodology will be held in Heredia, Costa Rica, from August 27th to 29th, 2014.

In the Fourth Section of the magazine on Revisions and Reviews, we publish the introduction to the book “The University professors and the IT. Use, appropriation, experiences ”, by Serafín Angel Torres Velandia and César Barona Ríos (coordinators) sponsored by the Universidad Autónoma of the State of Morelos and Juan Pablo Editor, from Mexico. “The Latin American and Caribbean childhood amidst the neoliberal crisis” is an essay by the Cuban professor Aurea Verónica Rodríguez Rodríguez where she makes a critical reflection on the developmentist policies of the neoliberal capitalist system. Finally, there is the interview made by Germán Muñoz González to Carles Feixa under the title: Carles Feixa, a pioneer of the studies on Youth in Ibero-America.
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One of the permanent objectives of the magazine is to have the highest possible indexes of impact and international visibility and to that end our editorial team permanently seeks the indexation and inclusion of our magazine in new data bases, and we have been recently included in: ZDB, La Red de Bibliotecas Universitarias Españolas (Rebiun), E-Journals: Library of Congress E-Resources Online Catalog, The University Of Arizona, Academic Journals Database, UTC Lupton Library, Sistema de Información de Bibliotecas-Universidad Autónoma de Chile, James Madison University libraries, Boise State University and the Chinese Directory Of Open Access.

In order to fulfill the requirement of Publindex de Colciencias from Colombia, the requisite of belonging to more than one bibliographic index in the magazine’s observation period, and enter Category A 1, we expect that, by the month of October, the magazine will have been indexed in ISI, which is one of the most important indexes in the world. This is a process that has taken us at least one year to complete, due to the adjustments required to that end. In this semester we will also present ourselves before Scopus, and to this end we have been working on an adjustment plan that would allow us to attain this objective. We hope that by 2014 the magazine will be indexed in ISI and Scopus.

The magazine has been re-indexed again by Publindex of Colciencias, Colombia, in Category A2, which will last until December of this year; and in Capes, Brazil, negotiations are being conducted for the magazine’s indexation in Category A in the area of Social Sciences.

We have made adjustments to the magazine, which contemplate the publication of the issues in the second and third month of every semester, the first issue of the volume is published in February and the second issue in September. The Creative Commons license is included in every one of the magazine’s articles since Volume 11, Issue 2 and since the previous issue the articles have the DOI identification. From this issue on, we will publish statistic consultation reports of the magazine in indexes and data bases; we will also publish the ethics and malpractices declaration. In this reorganization process and given the changes made in the editorial team, we welcome and thank the new Editorial and Scientific Committees members for their acceptance to participate in the magazine: Graciela Di Marco (in the Editorial Committee) and Diana Marre, Beatriz San Román, José González Monteagudo, Wilson López and Álvaro Díaz in the Scientific Committee.

The magazine permanently promotes its diffusion and subscription in other countries, so that it is read and quoted by the researchers, so that its findings are used in other papers and articles following the contemporary guidelines of knowledge in the thesis that “an article that it is not quoted does not exist”, because today quoting is the basis of the production of knowledge; therefore, diffusion among researchers and the scientific communities is fundamental, as is the participation in the evaluative and editorial processes; in this sense, we invite the people to turn to our magazine and become part of the data base of reviewers, with the fulfillment of international requirements demanded to have written articles in the magazine’s area in international magazines in the two years prior to the observation period of Publindex de Colciencias, Colombia. In the process of diffusion, we can also hold in-site and virtual meetings via Skype to present the magazine.

We have the generalized opinion on the international level that our magazine is one of the main media for the diffusion of studies on childhood and youth in Latin America and The Caribbean, which reflects the joint work by the authors, reviewers, editors, the editorial and scientific committees and in general those who participate in the process of giving visibility to this medium dedicated to the research advances on childhood and youth. Our policies of open, free access to our contents has been the key in achieving the objectives of creating research and academic communities in connection with a new field of knowledge like that of childhood and youth. For eleven years we have contributed to the acceptance and evaluation of articles with our permanent effort and rigorousness. The team that is responsible for the editing work is highly specialized and they have a vast experience in the editorial work of scientific publications.

At this moment, nearly 95 % of our articles are the result of research; this makes it possible for the knowledge contributed to be updated and valid so that it can be used by researchers, research centers and universities that work in the field of childhood and youth, therefore, this is a magazine that is presented in the Latin American and The Caribbean area as a must-consult and from the local studies of our countries it opens up to the global space of information so as to make our production visible and allow for interaction with the world’s knowledge production centers. We are not interested in competing but rather in contributing to the diffusion and circulation of scientific knowledge.

Another important element that we are consolidating is the inclusion of interviews made to investigators of high international level in the subject of childhood and youth. In this case, we are referring to Professor Carles Feixa, who is one of the most important Ibero-American specialists in youth studies and we are publishing an interesting document written by Germán Muñoz González.

Systematizations are another element that we want to promote and motivate so that you send us the systematizations of your experiences and works. In addition, we invite you to send us information on activities and events about which we will do the respective diffusion in Section Three.

The magazine’s editorial chronogram contemplates two monographic issues. The first one, “Youth movements, political participation of the young and public policies on the youth in Ibero-America and The Caribbean”, Volume 12, Issue 2 July-December, 2014 and there is a deadline to hand in the articles by October 30th, 2013. The second one, “Childhood, social institutions and political contexts in Latin America and the Caribbean” Volume 13 Issue 1, January-June, 2015.

We invite you to visit the magazine’s web page (http://revistaumanizales.cinde.org.co/index.php/Revista Latinoamericana index) that is available for the people interested in making good use of the information offered as well as the advanced technological search tools that conform it to facilitate its use and interaction with hypertexts and navigation via hyper-links with other magazines and networks in the field of childhood and youth in the world.

Guest editor,

Edgar Diego Erazo

Director-editor,

Héctor Fabio Ospina

Associated Editors,

Sônia Maria da Silva Araújo
Universidade Federal do Pará, Brasil

Liliana del Valle
Institución Educativa Villa Flora, Medellín, Colombia

Marta Cardona
Member of coordinating team of the Masters in Education and Human Rights of thez
Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana, Medellín, Colombia.